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The “Tech yet to be” blog has been dormant for way too long. Time to start refreshing the content. So much has changed in the technology realm since the last post in 2008.

Cell phones were primitive at best back in the mid 2000’s, and now they have become an all in one device for entertainment, communication, and finding information. The typical cell phone is full of sensors and transmitters. It knows your location, how your moving, the temperature, humidity, light intensity, what WiFi networks are nearby, what other devices are Bluetoothing nearby, and so much more. It is constantly in communication with the cell towers, WiFi networks, and other devices nearby.

In the previous article the notion that over a period of time the number of capabilities a robot possesses will double was introduced. While some of these capabilities will likely come from the artificial intelligence field, just as many will come from plain old engineering. The growth of capabilities will come about due to problems to be solved, and new tasks to be performed. There are many motivations driving the growth of capabilities in robotics.

I have no idea whether truly intelligence robots will ever exist, but I can definitely imagine that their actions will start to seem intelligent within the next twenty years. Being intelligent and seeming intelligent are close enough, that I am not sure the difference matters. Being intelligent implies having the ability to create new solutions and ideas for situations never previously encountered. Seeming intelligent is to apply existing solutions and ideas to new situations. Current robots and machines are far from seeming intelligent and even farther from being intelligent. However, as their accumulated set of capabilities increases, this will change. Over the next couple of articles, a sketch of the idea that as the number of capabilities a robot possesses increases, the overall flexibility of its actions will increase as well. Flexibility of action is the ability to respond appropriately to situations which have never been encountered before. As an individual robot’s capabilities reach into the millions, and then billions, there will be fewer and fewer situations where it will be unable to complete its task. In such an environment, robots will be very hard to distinguish from seeming intelligent to actually being intelligent. The meaning of capabilities will be rather broad, but the notion should be clear by the time we finish.

More and more cell phones are shipped with built-in GPS receivers. The position coordinates used by applications running on your cell phone allow for sharing your location with a community. Various projects have gathered this data to monitor health, traffic, and social interactions. The infrastructure for standardizing the exchange of location for applications is just beginning to form. Some of these services are even becoming available for phones which do not have GPS to accurately capture position. Instead, triangulation based on cell phone towers in range is used. Since the phone is tied to a communications network, sending information off to be aggregated with others, makes for many potential applications. Just a few are listed here.

With the release of the 905i series of cellphones in Japan, the degree and quality of integration continues to improve. 3G network, GPS, high-definition TV, 5-mega-pixel camera, fast internet access, and even English-Japanese translation are included. Of all the integration factors we have talked about, only Bluetooth and WiFi are missing.

Planning a trip to an unknown location requires a lot of work. While sites often exist with helpful information, there is no single source which has everything. This is one area where community sites such as WikiTravel can help to fill in the gaps For now outside of major cities, the details are often insufficient. If such sites were as popular as Facebook, then more information than you could possibly want would be available on just about everywhere and in just about any language of interest. However, this level of information overload is far away.

Now that you know where to go, its time to prepare for the trip. What will the temperature be like? What vaccinations are recommended? Am I going during any national holidays? What type of money will I need? Do they drive on the left or right? Do I need to worry about any of their unique laws? When going abroad there are so many issues to deal with, it helps to prepare.

Anytime you travel, pictures accumulate quickly. A few weeks after they are taken, you still have a good idea where each one came from. However, after a few months some of the place names start to fade, and the approximate location gets a bit hazy too. However, if you bring your GPS along, then determining where those pictures were taken becomes easy.

Technology related to the Global Positioning System (GPS) has advanced significantly since the system was opened for civilian use in 1983. In the early 90’s my Garmin 45 GPS receiver took five minutes or more to lock onto enough satellites to get a position fix. If left unused for a few weeks it could take an hour to update its database and provide location information. Essentially it was good for primitive navigation over open terrain, such as out at sea. Today I have a Garmin Vista HCx which locks on in seconds and provides color mapping and car like navigation capabilities. With the ability to find location quickly, it is so much more practical to use. Today GPS can be found not just in specialized receivers, but on laptops, in cars, and even in cell phones. In this article, I will talk about using a GPS receiver as an aid in travel. In a later article, we will discuss areas where the overall experience needs improvement.

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